120,000 Muslims Must Resettle in Jaffna: Sri Lanka’s Unfinished Business of Justice, Return, and Reconciliation
Colombo, Sri Lanka — Thirty-five years after one of the darkest and least resolved episodes of Sri Lanka’s civil war, the forced expulsion of Muslims from the Northern Province remains a moral, legal, and political failure that continues to haunt the island’s post-war reconciliation narrative. In October 1990, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) carried out what human rights organisations and scholars have repeatedly described as ethnic cleansing, forcibly ejecting the entire Muslim population from Jaffna and the wider Northern Province. Today, as Sri Lanka speaks the language of reconciliation, accountability, and pluralism, a blunt but unavoidable question resurfaces: when will the Muslims of Jaffna be allowed to return home in dignity, security, and permanence?
The call for the resettlement of nearly 120,000 Northern Muslims is not a communal demand, a political slogan, or a revisionist claim. It is a demand rooted in history, citizenship, constitutional rights, and transitional justice—principles that successive governments have either postponed or quietly ignored.
October 1990: A Crime That Time Did Not Heal
In mid-October 1990, the LTTE initiated a systematic expulsion of Muslims from the Jaffna Peninsula. Beginning with Chavakachcheri around October 15 and culminating with the expulsion of Muslims from Jaffna town on October 30, the operation unfolded with chilling efficiency. LTTE cadres moved from mosque to mosque, street to street, home to home, delivering a simple ultimatum: leave within hours—or die.
Families were allowed to carry only the clothes they were wearing and a token sum of money, often between 300 and 500 rupees. Jewellery, savings, land deeds, and business documents were confiscated. Homes, mosques, schools, and centuries-old commercial establishments were abandoned overnight. Entire communities vanished from Jaffna’s urban, mercantile, and cultural landscape within days.
Estimates of those expelled range between 72,000 and 100,000, though Muslim civil organisations argue the real figure—accounting for later displacement from Mannar, Mullaitivu, and Kilinochchi—approaches 120,000. What remains undisputed is that not a single Muslim family was spared.
A Community Betrayed
The Northern Muslims were not outsiders. They were not recent settlers. They were integral to Jaffna’s social and economic life for centuries—traders, landowners, artisans, teachers, and religious leaders who spoke Tamil, shared cultural practices, and lived alongside Tamil neighbours in relative harmony.
For this community, the expulsion was not merely displacement; it was a profound betrayal. Many Muslims had rejected militarisation, refused to align with state or insurgent forces, and believed neutrality would protect them. Instead, they became victims of collective punishment, accused en masse of collaborating with the Sri Lankan state—an allegation never substantiated, never individually examined, and never legally tested.
The LTTE justified the expulsion as a “military necessity,” citing alleged intelligence leaks and reprisals for atrocities in the Eastern Province. But history has been unkind to that justification. International law is unequivocal: collective punishment and forced displacement of civilians constitute war crimes.
Life in Exile: Puttalam’s Open-Air Prison
The majority of expelled Muslims fled south, eventually settling in the Puttalam District, where they lived in welfare camps for decades. What began as a temporary displacement turned into a generational exile.
Children were born and raised in camps never designed for long-term habitation. Education suffered. Livelihoods collapsed. Social mobility stagnated. The psychological toll—of dispossession, statelessness within one’s own country, and enforced dependency—remains immeasurable.
Unlike other displaced communities, Northern Muslims were rarely included meaningfully in peace negotiations, donor frameworks, or post-war reconstruction plans. They became, as one civil society activist described, “the internally displaced who were internally forgotten.”
Apologies Without Reparations
In 1994, LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran expressed regret in an interview with the BBC. In 2002, Anton Balasingham went further, formally apologising and calling the expulsion a “political blunder,” while acknowledging that Muslims belonged in the “Tamil homeland.”
These statements were historically significant—but symbolism without restitution is insufficient.
No structured return plan followed. No property restitution mechanism was established. No security guarantees were institutionalised. When the war ended in 2009, the opportunity for corrective justice emerged—but was once again squandered.
Post-War Silence and Structural Neglect
Since 2009, only a fraction of Northern Muslims have returned to Jaffna, Mannar, or Mullaitivu. Those who attempted to resettle encountered familiar obstacles: occupied land, destroyed homes, bureaucratic inertia, absence of livelihood support, and, in some cases, quiet resistance from local power structures.
Successive governments treated Northern Muslim return as a “sensitive issue,” code for political inconvenience. Sinhala-majoritarian governments feared Tamil backlash; Tamil-dominated local administrations feared demographic recalibration; national reconciliation mechanisms focused narrowly on Sinhala–Tamil binaries, leaving Muslims at the margins.
The result is a paradox: Sri Lanka speaks of reconciliation while normalising the permanent displacement of an entire community.
The Legal and Constitutional Case for Return
The right of return is not discretionary. It is anchored in Sri Lanka’s Constitution, international humanitarian law, and binding human rights norms.
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Article 14(1)(h) of the Constitution guarantees freedom of movement and residence.
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UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement affirm the right of displaced persons to return voluntarily, safely, and with dignity.
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Property restitution is a recognised post-conflict obligation, not a charitable option.
Failure to facilitate Muslim resettlement in the North is not merely an administrative lapse—it is a continuing rights violation.
Why Jaffna Matters
Resettlement is not only about housing; it is about restoring pluralism to Jaffna, a city historically defined by diversity. Muslims were central to Jaffna’s commercial networks, port economy, and transnational trade links. Their absence reshaped the city in subtle but lasting ways.
A genuinely reconciled North cannot be mono-ethnic by default. The return of Muslims would strengthen—not weaken—Tamil political claims by demonstrating commitment to inclusivity and justice.
The Politics of Demography—and the Fear That Follows
Opposition to Muslim resettlement is often framed in demographic anxiety. Yet this fear rests on a false premise: return is not colonisation. Northern Muslims are returning to ancestral lands, not acquiring new ones. Restoring pre-1990 demographics is an act of correction, not transformation.
Reconciliation cannot be hostage to ethno-nationalist insecurity—whether Sinhala or Tamil.
What a Serious Resettlement Policy Must Include
A credible national policy on Northern Muslim resettlement must go beyond rhetoric and pilot projects. It requires:
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A National Census of Expelled Northern Muslims, with verified land and property claims.
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A Property Restitution and Compensation Tribunal, independent of local political interference.
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Security Guarantees, including community policing and conflict-resolution mechanisms.
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Livelihood Restoration, with targeted economic grants and access to credit.
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Local Government Integration, ensuring returnees have political voice at municipal and provincial levels.
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Truth and Acknowledgment, including formal state recognition of the 1990 expulsion as ethnic cleansing.
A Test for Sri Lanka’s New Political Moment
As Sri Lanka claims to enter a new political era—promising governance reform, equality before the law, and post-war closure—the Northern Muslim question stands as a litmus test.
Reconciliation is not achieved by commemorations alone. It is achieved when displaced citizens return home, reclaim their land, reopen their mosques, and rebuild their lives without fear or favour.
Return Is Not a Favour—It Is a Right
The demand that 120,000 Muslims must resettle in Jaffna is not radical. What is radical is the idea that an entire community can be expelled, apologised to, and then quietly erased from the geography of justice.
Sri Lanka cannot indefinitely defer this reckoning. The longer the delay, the deeper the injustice, and the weaker the promise of reconciliation becomes.
History does not close chapters by itself. It waits—for courage, for policy, and for political will.